His Last Case-Book of Festive Adventures
by Michael JG Meathook
Summary: Here are my brilliant gems gifted to the world for Hades Lord of the Dead 's December Calendar Challenge of Awesomeness for 2019!
1. Dec 1st: Behind Pt1

Hades Lord of the Dead's Writing Prompt Contest

Dec. 1st: From Worldwielder_, Behind_

Or, _The Case of the Perennial Problem_

_(Is set during the year of 1914)_

* * *

[A.N.: Sorry this first story leans a bit dark. I thought it would be fun to play with the idea of a darker timeline in which these characters are broken after their years of involvement in so many gruesome cases and confronted by the vilest of human acts. Also, I apologize for the length. Since I did so much in one day, please forgive any grammatical/spelling errors [feel free to let me know of any you find!]. Thanks in advance for bearing with me!)

* * *

It took Dr. Watson a consciously long inhale before he felt like his hands shook to a more acceptable quiver. He plunged his tools back into his patient's inflicted flesh.

"Sponge," he told his nurse.

Mary Watson daubed the sweat off her husband's forehead.

"Blast," Watson cursed, his blade nicking a healthy piece of the patient's body he had no intention of extirpating. "Whiskey."

"I-," Mary's movements halted. "Are you sure that's such a good idea, Doctor? You've already… um, _indurated_ yourself enough with inebriant for this surgery. Certainly more intoxicants right now won't help-"

"Mrs. Watson!" the Doctor glared up at his nurse, his eyes blood red with veins and anger. "If this is a fight you insist on having, save it for _after_ a man's life is in my literal hands. Whiskey! Now, woman!"

—

Watson exhaled cigarette smoke with his post-surgery nerves when he heard his phone ring and Mary answering it in the parlor.

"Dr. Watson," Mary called. "Scotland Yard is asking for you."

"Take a message," he called back.

"Dear," Mary lavished the saccharine endearment with an undercurrent of sarcasm. "It's Scotland Yard. They wouldn't be calling you unless it was urgent."

Grunting, Watson stamped out his cigarette, gulped down his glass of scotch, and sloughed his body off the chair to lumber off toward the phone.

"Watson," he proclaimed into the phone.

"Ah, Doctor," the voice answered on the other end. "Enjoying a pleasant evening, I presume?"

"What do you want, Wimp?" Watson recognized the man's voice as belonging to the new Chief Inspector, Edward Wimp.

"Yes, yes, we should cut to the chase then, now shouldn't we? I take it you've been reading the papers?"

Watson sighed loud into the phone. "Is this you cutting to the chase?"

"Anyways," the Inspector cleared his throat. "Clearing up these recent strings of murders has been no simple task. As it is all hands on deck, as of late, you no doubt know the endless extent to which we've been relying on your friend, as well as how indispensable his contributions have been to our investigations-"

"No," Watson blurted. Noting Inspector Wimp's ensuing silence, Watson saw it appropriate to contextualize his objection. "I know nothing of your involvement with the, uh, Detective. Nor do I keep in contact with him enough to call us 'friends.' Whatever the Yard's dealings are with that man, they are strictly between you and he."

"Well, still," The exhaustion in Inspector Wimp's voice began bleeding through the phone's static. "Ever since the late Chief Inspector Lestrade's, um, untimely demise, or his successor, Chief Inspector Gregson, was arrested, Mr. Holmes has grown more and more distant with the Yard and increasingly reluctant in speaking to any police. He has little to no desire in cultivating anything resembling a personal relationship with me, he has no phone, answers no letters, has retreated to living in the East End slums, and acts with such impertinence to the Constables I send enquiring to his foxhole that I risk losing more young men to simply quitting the force than to them enlisting. But we need his expertise in this recent case."

Watson lit another cigarette. "I take it you pay him a decent wage for his input?"

"I fear, Dr. Watson, that the moderate sum we are able to send his way for the infrequent cases he does agree to consult on are all he consists upon, ignoring and refusing all other clientele."

"Hmm…" Watson fumbled around with the phone, cigarette, and a nearby bottle he used to refill his glass with. "I'll go and see him for you, attempt to succeed where Scotland Yard's best have failed. If I get from the Detective whatever information you need, you owe me equal recompense what you pay him."

—-

"God's teeth!" Dr. Watson heard his wife curse as he donned his hat and clamored out his front door to leave. "You trudged blood all over my house and smeared it across the phone."

As he made his way down the street, Watson ducked down a side street and examined his sticky hands under asthmatic gaslight. The patience's blood from the surgery had already dried and was flaking off his fingers. Avoiding a return to his own washroom and his wife's gaze, he unstoppered his pocket flask and poured whiskey across his hands, using the alcohol to dash the blood away.


	2. Dec 1st: Behind Pt2

Watson found himself turned around several times in Limehouse, as he had grown unfamiliar with the District, having not been there in decades, as well as the difference in the landscape. Somehow the district that was known for poverty and disease had grown even more festooned with pollution and a sickly, malnourished over-population.

Eventually, the Doctor stumbled upon the address given to him by Chief Inspector Wimp. _The Distended Mermaid, _a seafarer's bar that looked too briny and waterlogged for the most crustaceous of drunkards.

Entering the bar, Watson was assaulted, not by the rowdy din he had expected, but by a dearth of noise. It was as if the scant fish-reeking bearded mariners salted throughout the shack were only there to incontinently drown themselves by increments. The white-bearded, grizzled old sea urchins tossed back waves of drink strong enough to pickle their insides with each subsequent gulping of froth and suds. Rather than creaking, the floorboards squished in a way that gave the bar more the feeling of a capsized ship than a landlocked building.

Watson ran up the stairs to the rented out room. After receiving no answer to his knock, he helped himself to turn the doorknob, more rust than metal, and pried open the door, which had degraded into more must than wood planks.

A shot rang out of the fog-filled room, blasting a hole into the door frame, inches from Watson's head. Moldy splinters showered down on the Doctor's head as he ducked in a state of panic.

"What in all the bloody hells!?" Watson screamed.

"Who's that?" A wilting, rasp blighted voice croaked out.

"It's _me_, you senile old fool," Watson stood and straightened himself, squinting through a miasma swirling about the squat room.

There, facing the door was a lanky skeletal figure hunched over in a moth ravished armchair. Clasped in a bony hand was a smoking pistol that looked too heavy for the stick-thin arm that aimed the weapon at Watson. None other than Sherlock Holmes dropped the gun to the floor, opting to raise a bamboo stemmed pipe to his lips.

The Detective was near unrecognizable in his sixtieth year of age, even though it had been no more than seven years since last Watson had seen his one-time friend and partner. Sherlock's eyes were sunken in by dark fleshy circles, embedding the once sharp, frightfully intelligent gaze with wrinkles and sleep deprivation worse than had ever inflicted the Detective when he had resided at 221 Baker Street. His militantly clean-shaven face was sprouting days old grizzled ashen-grey stubble. On his scalp remained only a depleted yet disheveled crop of white greasy hairs. His attire was shaggy, covered in stains and burn marks, his coat missing buttons while his shirt buttons were misaligned, having been plugged into the wrong holes.

There was a deathly pallor to Sherlock's skin. His entire form appeared starved, even the scant bit of fat the thin man once had was melted away, his lithe muscles shriveled to obscurity by lack of use, their strength sapped by heavy drug use.

Watson walked over to Sherlock and grabbed the Detective's frail limb that held the gun. Sherlock protested while the Doctor took the weapon then peeled back the loose sleeve. Examining the enfeebled arm, Watson saw the inside crook of the elbow was purple and blistered, punished past the point of exhaustion by needles. He suspected to find the back of Sherlock's knees similarly abused.

With a violent wrench, the dilapidated Detective pried his wrist from the other's grasp.

"Get out," Sherlock wheezed in his voice weary from disuse. He inhaled from his strange pipe again, that Watson, due to his proximity, could smell and place as opium.

"What in blazes possessed you to shoot at me, old boy?"

"Thought you were that wearisome boy constable again," Sherlock answered, sniffling and rubbing clear his nostrils with the back of his likewise needle pocked hand.

"And what in heaven did you want to murder a boy for? And a policeman at that?"

"'Cause what if it wasn't him?" Sherlock heaved back into his chair, slanting his eyes to mere slits. "Could be anyone showing their mug up here. I killed the Professor, locked away his assassin… but there are plenty of other miscreants and devils running amuck out there, with any number of them who'd be pleased as pie to see me plugged, plucked, butchered, and roasted. This world, you see, is brimming with evil, and, like a lion, seeks to devour me. That much is the same as ever. Agents of the KKK, Lupin and his boys, or simply the Germans… they could strut through here any second of any day for any reason. So, please, hand me back my revolver, then leave me the bleeding hell alone."

"I'll gladly help myself to the latter. But I'll wait to supply you back your gun while I'm on my way out. However, before I do that, I need…" Watson looked around, taking inventory of the room's contents, attempting to spot the detailed profiles of the London criminal underground Inspector Wimp sought references from. What he then noticed was a room hardly situated to living at all, other than the one chair, a bent up gas stove, and a few blankets and pillows stuffed into a corner that he assumed were used in place of a proper bed.

The rest of the room looked to be some forgotten storage closet filled to bursting with folders and files. It was staggering to take in the sheer amount of information that must have filled anyone stack of portfolios reaching from floor to ceiling, let alone the knowledge that was lost in that sea of tomes, newspaper clippings, and the dossiers kept on persons of interest.

Wimp had warned Watson that, since the Detective had retired, he spent most of his time self-imprisoned in his room, working ceaselessly as a chronicler of all information relating, from explicit to tangential, to the topic of crime in London.

Scotland Yard no longer could entrust proper detective work or investigations to the clinically obsessive scribe Sherlock Holmes had become. Rather, they only called upon him to play curator to his own vast archives of unlawfulness.

"The talk was that you'd become an 'arm-chair detective,'" Watson whispered. "But this…"

"What?" Sherlock growled.

"Why?" Watson asked. "Why do this to yourself? What good can this, in _this_ quantity, do anybody? What you're doing here, it can't be healthy."

"And you would know all about what's _healthy_, wouldn't you, Doctor?"

"It's mad," Watson said.

"That, old friend, is the first half-way intelligent thing I believe you have ever said," Sherlock inhaled from his pipe once more and blew out a blue smoke ring, before placing the opium-dealing apparatus on the floor. "This world is mad, or so this testament of my years-long research would lead one to believe. My library, this, my _magnum opus_, if you will, is my biggest case; last case; indeed, my _only_ case. Before inventing myself as a detective, before I even grew to be a man, I have invested myself in solving one mystery: what is behind mankind that makes him evil? The perennial problem. My problem. Man's nature is more apparent than ever, now as we await that east wind coming."

"East wind? You mean Germany?"

"Hrmph," Sherlock snorted. "I mean war. One that will sweep into our city like a hurricane. A war that will affect our entire country, inflict the entire continent, and likely span the entire globe. And what is to be done about such a thing Watson? What could we have done to prevent such a scourge, when it is our very human nature to be sick? To be evil… How is it, friend, that we spent so much time seeking justice, striving for peace and prosperity for those we sought to help, but we ourselves are still evil dejected beings?"

As the Detective finished his veritable monologue, he bent forward and grabbed a small metallic case off the floor. Watson watched stunned as Sherlock rolled up his trouser cuff then retrieved a needle from the metal case.

A surge of feelings galvanized within the Doctor. Feelings he hadn't had for over seven years flooded his system. Guilt, shame, and anger at himself; anger at his friend for hurting himself; pain at the sad state he had allowed Sherlock to crumble into.

He warred within himself to knock the drugs from Sherlock's hands, to crush the syringe, the pipe, and throw the poisons out the window. But such were the deeds he had done once those several years ago, and none were sufficient enough in likewise stifling whatever incessant suffering Sherlock had teeming within him like tumors too deep to cut away, too ingrained in the bloodstream to be rooted out and extirpated.

Sherlock stabbed his vein and plunged the evil secretion into his system. Watson's impulse burning him from the inside was to kneel beside Sherlock, to apologize, to beg for forgiveness, to swear upon his immortal soul that he would never leave his friend's side, that he would never deject the greatest man he had ever known for even a moment.

But the smell of whiskey on his hands couldn't banish the scent of blood and death on his person. No matter what amends he strove to make, whatever redemption he sought, could never undo the sin he'd already committed. How could he delude himself into believing himself capable of helping Sherlock, when he himself was so far beyond any help himself.

Maybe Sherlock's research was true. Perhaps there was nothing behind human will than disorder and chaos.

—-

Watson snuck into his home late at night, creeping softly as his body would allow so as not to awake his wife. The last thing he wanted was to look her in the eye and be reminded of the patient she'd seen him lose that morning.

Grabbing a half-drunk bottle, Watson began to pour himself a whiskey. Thinking better of it, he tossed the contents of the glass down the kitchen sink.

It was possible there was no reason for the evil in the world, that God had forsaken his people and left them to kill each other with their needless wars, but that didn't force him to act on those principles. Starting that moment, Watson vowed, in his old age, to change his actions for the good, no matter how insignificant a mark he could make upon the world.


	3. Dec 2nd: Holmes is Gravely Ill

Dec. 2: From Book girl fan: _Holmes is gravely ill._

—-

Watson sipped his coffee, staring out the little window next to his desk. It was proving to be another full day at his surgery, the small break he was taking a true Godsend. Yet, even with his business finally coming to fruition, his evolution from bachelorhood, and his acquisition of a loving wife and home for his family, his scarred leg found itself restless and unconsciously tapping on such fulfilling days. Despite finding himself a proverbial man-who-had-it-all, he was brimming with a desire to be someplace else.

_And where, you old knobhead,_ he chuckled to himself, _could you possibly vanish off to that would be more exciting than your job of saving lives?_

The door to the surgery was forced open.

"Sorry," Watson stood from his desk. "I'm on my lunch- oh! Think of the devil…"

"No time for all that, Watson," Sherlock announced as he strode in without bothering to so much as make eye contact with his associate. The detective flung himself down in the patient's chair. "I'm dying Watson."

Watson hurried over, grabbing his tools. "What happened, Holmes? Are you injured? _Poisoned?_" The thought made the Doctor shiver. So many of the cases he assisted the detective on seemed to involve murders and attempted murders using toxins. Being familiar with Sherlock's eccentric nature, Watson wouldn't rule out that the detective would experiment with poisoning himself in order to solve a case.

"Alas, no such surface level, treatable afflictions prove to be the culprit of my deathly plight. My torture insists on assaulting my brain, my mind, my very soul."

"Dear God," Watson attempted to test Sherlock's reflexes only to be waved away as if his attempts at doctoring were as a hovering wasp. "Sounds dreadful."

"That doesn't begin to describe it by half, my old chap," Sherlock rubbed a hand down his face. "I can't sleep. Thinking is its own hell. Can't even distract myself with a good case. Eating is impossible. All that once consoled me is but hot coal in my lap."

"I don't believe you have ever before visited me at the surgery," Watson mused, picking up a small disposable wooden paddle. "Open your mouth and say 'aaahhh.'"

"I suppose," Sherlock moaned," If there is any hope in us finding a cure, I better do as you say."

Acquiescing to Watson's instruction, Sherlock opened his mouth wide for inspection.

"Hmm…" Watson said. "Throat looks healthy… Tongue… Glands… The roof of your mouth is partially scuffed, no doubt by that dry toast you too often treat as a full meal, but that should heal in no time…"

"No time!?" Sherlock dramatically thrust his head back, away from inspection. He leaped from his chair and began pacing. "Watson, my mouth has been _mangled_ by that infernal toast! It is, in no minced words, _killing me_!"

"_That_ is the cause of all this alarm?" Watson's system was shocked by equal quantities of relief and humor. His worked up nerves went slack in an instant, his muscles loosening from his tense state.

"Precisely, my dear Watson," Sherlock said with no sense of irony. "And now, if you insist on having your break, I can head back to Baker Street and await whatever salve or cure you will spare no cost in sending my way. Though, I beg of you, please do so with all the haste you can muster!"

"Oh, no," Watson laughed. "The break can wait. Stay awhile. _This_ is exactly the sort of thing I've desperately been needing in my life."


	4. Dec 3rd: Lestrade Ice-Skates

Dec. 3rd: From **cjnwriter**: _Lestrade's wife teaches him how to ice skate._

—_-_

"Mrs. Lestrade, I can't for the life of me divine a reason you would drag me out into this white hell." Inspector Lestrade held his wife's mittened hand in his own leather-bound hand. To outside observers it would appear the man was keeping his wife warm, but, as he looked at her frost ruddied face beaming with a smile that embraced the freezing elements, he knew the hand-holding was his own desperate attempt to stave off hypothermia.

"Gil! We're almost there!" She chimed. "Trust me. Nothing will bring you out of your recent outbreak of the grumps better than this."

"Hrumph," Lestrade muttered. "You know I'm not partial to surprises." Just that week the Inspector had had his fill of surprise answers to riddles; all of which he knew he should have deduced the solution to. Criminal cases that had been his prerogative to solve, all which had confounded him until a detective, not even associated with the police, had laid bare the simple truth. "Ugh, listen to me, Delphine. I sound like a fraud."

Delphine Lestrade scurried in front of her husband, halting them both in their tracks. "Is this what your sour moods have been about? You don't feel you're working your hardest at being a detective?"

"I- I don't know," He chattered. "Just… what am I doing there? I still work as hard as I ever have, and the Lord knows how I put myself to the grindstone for years to become a constable for the Yard, let alone Inspector… But for why? To solve murders? To enact justice? What overconfidence of abilities fooled me to believe I was the right man for the job? Now, can we _please_ keep moving before my prick turns into an icicle?"

Delphine ran her other hand down her husband's cheek, the fur on her coat cuff tickling his face. Then she bowled forward into the knee-high snow following a path invisible save to her memory, dragging Gil Lestrade through her icy wake. "Not being the best at something doesn't disqualify you from being a major contributor. And how could you call yourself 'over-confident' after admitting you got your place at the Yard through your own grit and determination? Here it is! Just past this tree."

—-

The lost pond Delphine had spirited Gil Lestrade to was splendidly frozen over and so far untouched by any human that winter. Delphine had used the pond for skating since she was a child and told him it had once been a popular spot for others as well. Finally returning to the nameless spot after years, it was no wonder they found themselves isolated. The trees of Delphine's youth had grown into a tall dark, leafless forest around the pond, blocking it from sight to any uninitiated.

"Did I tie these correctly?" Lestrade asked, pointing to his pair of, hitherto, unused ice-skate that were apparently the mysterious luggage his wife had asked him to carry, promising a worthy surprise.

"Spot on," Already on the ice, Delphine skated to a stop before Lestrade in a deft maneuver that kicked up a dusting of snowflakes at her feet. "Come on up here and join me!"

—-

Hours later Lestrade felt he was finally getting a grip on, not only keeping his bladed feet below his head but also how to turn on the skates before careening into a snowbank. His bruised, battered body made each fall to the hard ice a worse and worse prospect, but his marked improvement forced him back at after every scrape.

Delphine skated circles, figure-eights, and partially hopped shapes around Lestrade.

"There's that smile," Delphine laughed as she flew by her husband.

"It would be impossible to feel even an ounce of my ennui out here," he could feel the words coming out of a face expressing joy. "Especially watching you dance all over the ice. You're incredible!"

—-

As the Lestrades made their way back into the city, arms over shoulders, huddling in to each other for warmth, they found a shoveled street where cabs could be hailed from.

From the opposite direction, they saw two figures materializing out from the mist.

"A resounding, utter waste of an afternoon," The taller figure could be heard saying.

"I thought it would be fun," the second figure replied in a dejected tone.

"Who is that?" Delphine asked. "They sound familiar."

Moments later none other than Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson approached the couple.

"Mr. Holmes. Dr. Watson. What a splendid surprise," Delphine greeted the duo.

"Who…?" Sherlock squinted at the Lestrades.

"Oh! What a privilege. Inspector Lestrade," Watson doffed his hat. "Mrs. Lestrade. What brings you out on such a frigid afternoon?"

"We-"

"Don't be daft, my dear Watson," Sherlock interrupted. "Surely it couldn't escape even your attention the obvious reason the Inspector and his wife have risked themselves out into this inhospitable environment. They have been at the same abominable hobby you tricked me into attempting."

"Skating didn't prove to your liking, Mr. Holmes?" Delphine asked.

"Nothing could prove a more frivolous waste of time," Sherlock shook his head in indignation at the thought. "No proper gentleman of intellect need extend the effort to proving his physical adroitness with these torture devices strapped upon their feet. I was just explaining to my friend Watson here the myriad ways in which our time would have been better spent than with our bums in the snow."

"Sounds like you just haven't the knack for skating," Delphine said.

"I would pity myself had I even a grain of ability at this drivel. Here's a hansom, I'll do my duty by offering it to the Inspector and the lady. Watson and I shall await the next one. Good evening."

In the hansom, the door closed, Lestrade once again alone with his wife, he pulled her closer and kissed her as long and deeply as he could. As they broke apart, he said in a spot-on impersonation, "I would pity myself had I even a _grain-_"

Giggling, Delphine pulled Gil's face back into hers. "Oh, shut up already," she managed to murmur between the gaps of their kissing.


End file.
